Canon Pixma MP560 Printer Review

Canon has constantly had an eye with regard to design and, in that respect, the Pixma MP560 does not fail. At rest, this multi-function inkjet printer, having a scanner, two paper-input trays and a built-in duplexer, is a sleek black and silver package. On the job, it is a printing hub, having a flip-up display and iPod-esque revolving controller. Costing around £100 on the internet, you obtain plenty of printer for the investment, with crisp results supplied at pretty good rates, along with built-in Wi-Fi networking capability.

To obtain a high review report, a printer has to execute very well whatever you chuck at it, and, on the whole, the MP560 does. Even with the 'fast' setting plain text is razor-sharp and unspattered. It is somewhat greyer than we want, however bumping up the setting to 'standard' fixes this, while the 'high' setting provides truly laser-like output.

At none of the configurations are pages presented at breakneck speed though they are around what we'd anticipate for this class of machine. Duplex performance, on the other hand, is outstanding in actual fact, with the MP560 waiting only 4 seconds for the ink to dry prior to pulling the page back into its body and flipping it over in order to print on the back. The HP Photosmart Premium C309g, in comparison, waited a full 20 seconds prior to turning over.

The MP560 excelled itself when we changed to mixed business output, mixing text and basic graphics. White text upon a black backdrop is legible right down to 4 points at each quality settings, plus blocks of solid black are thick and pleasing at both the standard and high options. These are best defined as 'fair' at the fast setting, however, with our complex test page created in just 17 seconds, the general results are good. Colours are brilliant and vibrant plus we experienced absolutely no difficulties printing black text on coloured backgrounds. You can rightly expect a bit of bleeding associated with the black into the lighter colours when the paper gets to be saturated, yet the MP560 is able to to avoid this at all quality levels.

There are usually apparent variations between the fineness of the print at all three values, with a rough grain within pieces of solid colour printed employing the fast setting, and super-smooth hues at the high setting. At all of the settings, nevertheless, the MP560 worked well in our greyscale-differentiation test. At all levels, there is apparent differentiation as far as 90 per cent. We often notice this any time testing inkjet printers, and so it does not give any great cause for anxiety in the MP560's case.

Picture reproduction is first-class, with strong, satisfying blacks in places of strong shadow, such as night-time skies, and lively primary colours produced with our selection of test photos. Utilizing Canon's own picture paper, transitions in between similar hues demonstrate well-handled gradations, making for real looking skies, and, even within dark areas, we could make out delicate changes in lighting. In addition, the half-tone is so good that our results appeared like lab-printed photographs no doubt in part because of the five Canon Pixma MP560 ink cartridges.

The Canon Pixma MP560 is a feature-packed all-in-one printer. The sole element it is lacking is a fax. It really is no slouch when it comes to sustaining high standards either, generating some truly outstanding results in our tests. Regardless of this, Canon has held the selling price down to a reasonable level.


Canon Pixma MP560 ink cartridges are available here.